Glen Adams

Biography

Glen Adams (b. Glenroy Phillip Adams, 1950) is a Jamaican musician, composer, arranger, engineer, producer, based since the mid-1970s in Brooklyn, New York. Adams' first break in the music business came as a teenager when he appeared as a singer on Radio Jamaica's Opportunity Knocks show hosted by Vere Johns, and he began performing in Kingston and St. Andrews at weekends. He made his first record, "Wonderthirst", in 1960 for Coxsone Dodd at Federal Recording Studio, the title of the song becom...

Glen Adams (b. Glenroy Phillip Adams, 1950) is a Jamaican musician, composer, arranger, engineer, producer, based since the mid-1970s in Brooklyn, New York.

Adams' first break in the music business came as a teenager when he appeared as a singer on Radio Jamaica's Opportunity Knocks show hosted by Vere Johns, and he began performing in Kingston and St. Andrews at weekends. He made his first record, "Wonderthirst", in 1960 for Coxsone Dodd at Federal Recording Studio, the title of the song becoming his nickname. He then moved on to work with Duke Reid's Treasure Isle set-up, and co-founded The Heptones before moving on to The Pioneers.

Adams then moved on again to work with Bunny Lee as a solo singer and also A&R man. He began filling in on keyboards when other musicians failed to turn up for recording sessions, with sufficient success that he became known as a session player. Along with other musicians such as the Barrett brothers (Aston and Carlton), he performed in sessions for a range of producers under a variety of group names notably The Hippy Boys for Bunny Lee, where Adams did some of his most memorable work accompanying Slim Smith, The Reggae Boys, and The Upsetters for Lee "Scratch" Perry. Adams also worked for Herman Chin Loy, where he was one of a number of keyboard players to record under the name Augustus Pablo, before Horace Swaby adopted that identity.

Perry took The Upsetters to tour the United Kingdom in the wake of his hit "Return Of Django" (and the less successful follow-up, "Live Injectiion"), returning to Jamaica in 1970. As part of The Upsetters, Adams backed The Wailers during their spell with Perry, and Adams did much of the arranging and composed the song "Mr. Brown". When The Wailers parted company with Perry in 1971, taking The Upsetter's rhythm section with them, Adams remained with Perry, but began to split his time between Jamaica and the United States, where he set up his own Capo record label, and put together a new band, the Blue Grass Experience. He eventually moved to Brooklyn permanently in 1975, where he became more involved in producing, and also worked for Brad Osbourne's Clocktower and Lloyd Barnes' Bullwackie labels, and played with The Realistics band.

In the late 1970s, Adams expanded into R&B and Rap production.

After many years in the studio, Adams has recently returned to live performance, touring the USA and Europe with The Slackers, and also playing occasional NYC shows with the Jammyland All-Stars.

Adams now owns his own recording studio and has recently produced for artists such as Susan Cadogan and Keith Rowe, half of the vocal duo Keith & Tex from Jamaica. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.